Literally true vs. emotionally expressive

[Silent3]

Speaking of the word "literally", how often have you heard someone say something like, "They were great in concert! They literally blew my socks off!", where "literally", a word the entire point of which is to mean "with no figurative or exaggerated interpretation intended", simply becomes another throw-away intensifier, used in statements which are most certainly not literally true?

I have to wonder, when I read some of the ranting you find so commonly on DU, how many of the posters really, truly, literally mean what they say, and how much of the flaming rhetoric is just boiling-over emotion, from people who might actually have more nuanced, subtle opinions behind their strident, often very absolutist, language.

I had a grandmother for whom everything she liked was "the best", whatever she disliked was "the worst". If she liked the pie, it was the best pie she'd ever eaten. If she didn't believe the guy on television, he was the worst liar she'd ever heard. I don't think she literally meant much of it, but she used superlatives the way Joe Pesci uses "fuck" and "fuckin'".

The again, I think, sadly, there really is a lot of black-and-white thinking out there too, a lot of people with no patience for the in-betweens, distrustful of shades of gray, who react as if the word "nuance" is a synonym for "weasel". Most of us here cringed when they heard Bush said, "You're either with us or against us", but I have to wonder how many DUers cringed because of they disliked that kind of rigid, inflexible, simplistic rhetoric, or cringed simply because they'd place their own sharp for/against line in a different place than Bush would.

[BlooInBloo]

1. Rule #1 of the intertubez: If it isn't the BESTEST or WORSTEST or MOST IMPORTANT THING EVAR...

It's not worth saying.

[Robb]

2. I think it's meant to help us get a framework within which

...we can discuss the issue.

You go to extremes, on both sides, dig in your heels and after a lot of tugging meet somewhere in the middle. At least that's how the art of discussion is meant to work.

It does seem there has been more heel-digging than usual lately, and little sign of the rope moving. "Compromise is for quitters," I guess. :shrug:

[Silent3]

7. I think that way of discussing things...

...just leads to people talking at each other, instead of with each other. There are situations, like in a courtroom where a defendant has to, in the end, be declared either guilty or innocent, where perhaps the dynamic of two clearly opposing sides serves a useful function, but I don't know how well that dynamic serves us elsewhere.

Even the common phrase "both sides" draws lines that don't always make sense. There can be many sides to an issue, and I don't just mean varying points of moderation neatly strung out in between two extremes, but a diverse landscape of positions.

[Curtland1015]

3. Yeah, there are no shades of grey on the tubes.

It won't be tolerated.

[rucky]

4. of course!

but that's part of what makes this place interesting.

we get to vent. er- literally?

[depakid]

5. On the other hand, when someone says Michelle Bachman is delusional- quite literally

They're making an accurate statement. The contrast with non-delusional people couldn't be clearer. The only shades of grey, so to speak, are among those who share similar pathologies- and so we how attempt to delineate the shades via things like diagnostic criteria in DSM IV.

Or with comparisons to people like Virginia Foxx.

Delusional people are still quite capable of inviting emotion into the equation of course- but that doesn't invalidate the underlying matter.

[Uncle Joe]

6. I believe you make a good point, Silent, I have similar thoughts whenever

I hear someone giving 110+%, in my book anything past a 100 = heart attack.

I also agree regarding the with us or against us mentality existing on all sides of the debate or political spectrum.

Thanks for the thread.

[MADem]

8. That was a fun read--a great big Kick and Rec! nt

[mmonk]

9. And then there are those that can't recognize a comparison

not to be taken literally but figuratively and want to bash the poster and unrecommend the thread into oblivion without discussing real merits.

[burning rain]

10. You're the most pitiful squish I've ever met.

:D